‘It seems fine.’ She kept on staring at Strop. ‘So there really was a dog,’ she said. ‘I thought he was part of my nightmare.’
‘What, Strop?’ Mike grinned. ‘He’s no nightmare. He’s solidly grounded in reality. So well grounded, in fact, that if he gets any closer to the ground we’ll have to fit him with wheels.’
‘You keep a dog in the hospital?’
‘He’s a hospital dog. He has qualifications in toilet training, symptom sharing and sympathy. Just try him.’
Strop looked up toward the bed. His vast, mournful eyes met Tessa’s, limpid in their melancholy. He gave a faint wag of his tail, but went straight back to being mournful.
‘Oh, I can see that.’ Tess chuckled. ‘He’d make any patient feel better immediately. Like they’re not the only ones feeling awful, and they couldn’t possibly be feeling as awful as that!’
Strop flopped himself wearily down on the bedside mat. Mike shoved him gently aside with his foot—the dog slid under the bed without a protest as if this was what happened all the time—and then Mike turned his attention back to his patient.
That wasn’t hard to do.
‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Strop steals my limelight all the time. Your arm, Miss Westcott. How is it?’
Tess wriggled it experimentally and winced. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s bruised but it’s fine. You must have put the humerus right back in or it’d hurt a lot more than this.’
‘The humerus…’ Mike’s face stilled. Last night he’d suspected she had obstetric knowledge, and now… ‘You’re a nurse, then?’
‘Nope.’ She smiled and it was like a blaze of sunshine. ‘Guess again.’
‘A physio? An osteopath?’
‘Try doctor.’
‘A doctor!’ He stared.
‘Females can be,’ she said, still smiling. Her voice was gently teasing. ‘In the States, medicine’s about fifty-fifty. Don’t tell me you still keep women in their place down under.’
‘No. But…’ Mike thought back to the crazy red stilettos. He stared down, and there they were, parked neatly side by side under the bed beside Strop. Crimson stilettos. And… A doctor?
‘And doctors are allowed to wear whatever they like,’ she told him, following his gaze and knowing what he was thinking in a flash. ‘There’s no need for us to put on black lace-ups when we graduate—so you can take that slapped-by-a-wet-fish look off your face, Dr Llewellyn. Right now.’
‘No. Right.’ He took a deep breath and managed a smile. ‘You’re a practising doctor, then?’
‘That’s right. I work in Emergency in LA.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, that’s put me on my mettle.’ He had himself back in hand now. Almost. ‘Doctors are the worst patients,’ he said, and tried a grin. ‘They’re almost as scary to treat as lawyers.’ He sat on the bed beside her and tried to ignore the weird feel of intimacy his action created. Hell, he sat on all his patients beds! ‘Your shoulder’s really OK?’
Tess moved it cautiously against the pillows and winced again.
‘It’s sore,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s definitely back in position. It’s just bruised.’
‘Can I see?’
‘Sure.’ There was no reason why he shouldn’t. There was no reason why she should blush either as he loosened her hospital gown and gently examined the shoulder and the bruising of her arm. He was just a doctor, after all…
His fingers were gentle and sure, and his eyes watched her face as he carefully tested the injured arm. ‘Do you have full movement?’
‘I can wiggle everything,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t want to.’
He smiled. ‘I don’t blame you. In a day or two it’ll look really spectacular.’ He ran his hands over the bruised arm, trying to block out his thoughts of Tessa the woman and turn them back to Tessa the patient. Usually he had no problem with differentiating work from personalities, but Tessa was something else! And her blush didn’t help at all.
‘You may not want to wiggle, but you’ll live,’ he pronounced finally. He pulled the sheet back to cover her and tucked her in.
It was a caring gesture that he made every day of his working life but suddenly the gesture was far, far different. Intimate. He stood looking down at the girl in the bed, struggling to maintain his lazy smile.
‘You might even feel like living after your sleep,’ he said finally, shoving away the strange sensations he was feeling and striving hard to sound normal. His smile deepened. ‘Fifteen hours’ straight sleep isn’t bad.’
‘I don’t think I’ve slept since I knew Grandpa was missing,’ she admitted. She grimaced. ‘And to sleep fifteen hours now, when I should be out searching for Grandpa…’
‘There’s no need for you to be out searching, Tess. The police and the locals are all looking as hard as they can, and they’re being thorough.’
‘I know the farm, though. I know the places he loved to go.’
‘But—’
‘But what?’ She glared up at him. ‘What? Why do you sound like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like you’re trying to scotch any ideas I might have of where he might be.’
He sighed. This was hard. Bloody hard. But, then, telling families the worst was something he’d had to face many times.
‘Tess, your grandfather has mitral valve disease and atrial fibrillation,’ he said softly. ‘He’s been missing for over four days now. It’s my guess… Well, that farm of his is as rugged as any around here. There’re plenty of places a body could lie for months and not be found. Your grandfather is eighty-three years old. If he went out and had a heart attack…well, my guess is that’s exactly what’s happened. His truck’s still at the house. He had his goats tethered and Doris due to deliver. If he was going away, he’d have organised people to care for them.’
‘I know that,’ Tess said. She stared up, and any trace of her gorgeous smile had completely disappeared. Her distress was obvious. ‘But… I didn’t know he had heart disease.’
‘Have you been in contact with him recently?’ he asked. ‘I was under the impression he had no contact with his family.’
‘He and my dad didn’t get along,’ she said bleakly. She was obviously still taking the heart disease bit on board and was thinking it through as she talked. She turned and stared out the window, fighting to get her face back in order, and it was as if she was talking to herself. ‘Dad and Grandpa fought. Dad went to the States when he was twenty. He met my mom there and he stayed. He died when I was sixteen, without ever coming back here.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No. Don’t be. My family history has nothing to do with you.’ She sighed again and shrugged, turning back to face him. ‘Dad was always against me coming back, but he was pig-headed and…well, he was stubborn enough to make me wonder whether the disagreement had all been one way. So when Dad died…Mom said I should know my background so she sent me out to stay. I spent a summer vacation here with Grandpa. I stayed here for three months, just after high school.’
Three